


These Mortal Lives

by Pickwick12



Category: Avengers (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 05:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5955085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pickwick12/pseuds/Pickwick12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Loki Laufeyson, the ultimate punishment was exile to earth to live out his days as a mortal. Broken, hungry, and alone, will he find redemption in kind eyes and the realization of the preciousness of life? A bit angsty, a bit romantic, a bit of a mystery, and a whole lot about Loki's inward journey of pain, healing, and redemption. Imagines a future beyond Thor: The Dark World.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Shadow in the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bodies of the mortals had always seemed such flimsy things from the perspective of Asgard, but now that he inhabited one, he realized how tenaciously they clung to life, no matter how pathetic.

Prologue

Had Odin meant it as a punishment? He asked himself, for it didn't seem so, not any more. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked at the woman next to him, the small, soft form with a rosebud mouth and pale, short hair. He reached out a hand to touch her cheek, and he smiled. The Allfather had known, had given him a blessing when he least deserved or understood it. Loki was happy.

A Shadow in the Night

A dark figure shivered beneath the light cast by a dingy, all-night drugstore. Loki lifted his head after a long while, revealing piercing eyes in a thin, haggard face. He stared into the darkness and wondered where he should let his weary feet drag him this night. He hardly cared. He'd expected to die by now. The bodies of the mortals had always seemed such flimsy things from the perspective of Asgard, but now that he inhabited one, he realized how tenaciously they clung to life, no matter how pathetic.

After a while, he simply sank down where he stood, his legs under him, wrapping his arms around himself for warmth. He wondered how long it would be before one of them came to run him away, one of their peacekeepers in a uniform, men who would have been nothing to him in the past but whose strength his body could no longer match.

Cough cough cough

The sound came closer, accompanied by the noise of rushed human feet running toward him. A figure—two, really, rounded the corner and dashed toward the drugstore, one very small person being carried by one slightly taller. The taller person turned to him and asked breathlessly, "Are they open?" His blank stare caused her to shake her head and carry the gasping smaller person, the source of the insistent coughing, toward the glass door and inside the shop.

Loki rested his head against the side of the building and waited. For the first time in days, he was actually curious. He wanted to know why the two people—the two females—had been so eager to reach that particular point in the city. He saw nothing remarkable about the shop, nothing to make it any more desirable than any other place in Los Angeles. He also wanted to see the tiny person when she wasn't coughing. He'd never been close to a human child.

The door opened after a short time, and the taller woman emerged slowly with a look of relief on her pale face. The child was not in her arms. Instead, she walked unaided on what seemed to Loki like impossibly tiny feet. She held a small, gray object in her mouth and was no longer gasping for air.

"She has asthma," said the taller woman, nodding toward the tiny one. "I forgot to get her inhaler refilled." Loki had heard of neither asthma nor inhalers, but he could reason from the obvious. The child's coughing had been silenced by the object, and the object had come from the store. He smiled. It was a pleasure so simple as to be ridiculous, but he had enjoyed nothing for a long time, and he was pleased to have his tiny mystery solved. As if she was her own tiny mystery, the little girl stared at him with gravely clever green eyes.

"Are you hungry?" asked the taller woman, her eyes taking in Loki's tattered clothing and unshaven face. Most humans, he had come to realize, thought him below notice because of his appearance, but a few had offered him money in recent days, usually with the sneer of superiority on their faces. The woman's face only showed concern.

"Yes," he answered simply, unable to think of anything he could lose by his honesty.

"Come with us." Loki looked up in genuine surprise at the woman's words. "Pip and I are going to McDonald's to celebrate, right, Pip?" The child, who was obviously the Pip being mentioned, took the gray cylinder out of her mouth and looked up at the taller woman as a large smile slowly transformed her face into pure impishness. She did not speak.

Loki stood up, feeling the wind knife him through the holes in his thin black shirt. He followed the women. He didn't know why, except that death was long in coming, and his stomach growled at him angrily. So much easier to imagine starving oneself than to actually do it. Human bodies were insistent in their cravings.

Two blocks later, the taller woman led them through another of the city's innumerable dirty glass doors and into McDonald's. Loki had never been inside such a place, but he had seen the name all over the city and smelled what seemed to be the scent of food that issued from it wherever it occurred.

Bright lights and noise overwhelmed Loki's senses. People yelling, eating, walking all around him. He felt a light touch on his right hand and looked down to find Pip next to him. "It's all right," she said. "Just tell mom what you want, and she'll get it. I don't like to go up there, either." She nodded toward a morass of people at the front of the room who appeared to be waiting in lines in front of a large, unpleasant kitchen.

Mother. That made sense. The child and the woman shared pale skin and button noses. "I would like—meat," he said, feeling himself at a loss.

"Meat?" said the mother encouragingly, "beef or chicken?"

"I want a Happy Meal!" put in little Pip suddenly, earning a look from her mother.

"Don't interrupt, Philippa," she said.

"It's all right," said Loki. "I'll have the same." The burst of laughter that flew out of the older woman's mouth shocked him.

"I'm sorry," she said after a while. "You're obviously not from around here. I should have gotten that from the accent. I'll order you a couple of hamburgers."

Loki waited beside the little girl, feeling rather foolish, but grateful that this little person didn't seem to be as insistent upon making conversation as some of the mortals he'd had the misfortune to meet.

A short time passed, and the mother returned holding a paper bag that smelled of food. Loki felt as if his stomach would jump from his body at any moment, but somehow he managed to restrain himself until he was seated next to the women and child in an uncomfortable chair that was somehow attached to a hideously ugly table. He wondered again, as he constantly wondered, how mortals managed to bear living with such a vast plethora of ugly things around them. Asgard was beautiful, both in essence and in the way its resources had been harvested for use. Nothing existed for function's sake alone; all was beautiful. Nothing jarred the eyes and darkened the mind with its unpleasant form. He missed the peace that unbroken beauty engendered.

Loki eagerly accepted the greasy parcels the mother handed him. He would have eaten the paper, but just in time, he saw Pip unwrap her food and discard the white encasement, so he did the same, then brought the doughy, meaty mass to his lips. It was both loathsome and toothsome, a disaster and the most delightful meal he'd ever tasted, made so by his gnawing hunger as it was finally put to rest. He ate two of the nasty things and found that he felt better than he had in at least a week.

"That was fast," the mother observed. "Here, have another one." She handed him a third, undoubtedly purchased for herself, he realized, but he took it, despising his own neediness and dispatching the thing as rapidly as he had its predecessors.

When he had finished, he felt Pip's round jade eyes on him again. He smiled uncomfortably. It seemed unaccountable that such a miniscule human person could unsettle him, but then, the past weeks had been filled with unbelievable things. He wondered if all mortal children had eyes like hers.

"What's your name?" asked the mother, smiling warmly. "I'm Lena, and this is Philippa, but we call her Pip."

"Oh," said Loki. There was no name-shortening on Asgaard, at least not in the palace of Odin.

"My name…is Loki," he finally answered. What did it matter if they knew?

"Loki." Pip's voice was soft and high. He liked the way his name sounded on her lips, like a song. Nothing like the frost that covered his soul.

"Thank you for eating with us, Mr. Loki," said Lena, smiling into his eyes. "We should be going home now. It's way past Miss Pip's bedtime."

Mothers. He could understand those. Tender even when they were angry, always worried for their children, forever putting themselves behind their offspring. Mothers were the same in any realm.

Loki followed mother and daughter outside and prepared to leave them at the corner of the street, but Lena turned back to him one last time. "If—she hesitated—if you need a place to sleep, I know someone who has one. I don't want to assume—"

"Inside?" The question was wistful on his lips. He had not slept inside for a fortnight.

"Of course," said the woman, with compassion in her eyes. He deplored the thought of himself as an object of pity almost beyond bearing, but he followed the woman again. He had begun to learn that basic need could almost always supersede feeling when one was encased in mortal flesh.

Stray Cats

Lena Warren kept her hand on the small can of mace in her purse. The tall, thin stranger seemed more desperate than dangerous, but she didn't take chances. The city could be an ugly place. Her daughter's tiny hand clutched her purse strap, and together they led the man toward the nearest Metro station. Lena hoped Belinda wouldn't be too upset that she was bringing another one, another stray.

She'd never been able to resist stray kittens as a little girl, and she hadn't changed all that much as a grown woman. Men, women, kids, she couldn't turn them away, not when they needed help. People called her naïve sometimes, but it wasn't that. She knew some of the people she helped were taking advantage, but that wasn't what mattered. She had decided years before that helping someone who didn't deserve it was a much better thing than failing to help someone who did.

She wasn't stupid enough to bring them home, not any more, anyway. She'd made that mistake when she was much younger and found herself locked in the bathroom dialing the police. Nowadays, she took them to Belinda, her expansive friend who owned a house that was always filled with a conglomeration of recovering addicts, juvenile offenders, people out of work, and anyone else who just needed a place for a while.

The stranger—Loki—would at least have a mattress to sleep on there. Who in the world asked if a place to sleep was inside? Lena didn't know where he was from, but she hated to see anyone so down and out.

The metro was half empty because of the late hour, and Lena sat with her daughter in her lap. Loki took his place beside her, staring at the ground or his worn shoes or perhaps nothing. She didn't pry. People she helped almost never became further parts of her life. She was a temporary stop—a blessing, she hoped—but nothing permanent. She didn't need their stories to help them, and most were reluctant to speak.

"Next stop," Lena said softly, and the man's intense blue eyes turned to her suddenly. She felt as if he could see into her, the way it was always described in books. She hadn't thought the sensation was a real one until that moment, and she couldn't tell if he approved of what he saw or if he was passing judgment. She only knew that she felt transparent when he looked at her.

She was relieved when the train pulled into the station nearest Belinda's house. She needed an excuse to get away from those haunting eyes.

The Man in Black

Pip liked the man who wore all black. She liked his wavy black hair and his long fingers and the way he walked. He reminded her of the heroes in her book, the fairy tale one Mummy had given her for Christmas, with the story in it about the lost prince. Mr. Loki was a lost prince. She was absolutely sure of that.

She had stared at him for the whole train ride, trying to figure out where he had come from and why he was stuck riding the subway when a prince should surely have a flying horse or a chariot. Mummy had always said staring at strangers was impolite, but Pip couldn't help it, and he didn't seem to mind. She wanted to ask him where he came from and if he was married to a princess and if he was going to be king someday, but she was too shy. Anyway, Mummy would have thought she was crazy. After all, she wasn't a baby who didn't know the difference between real and make-believe. But Mr. Loki was a prince. She knew it.

That's why she didn't think to be afraid of him. She was sometimes scared of the people Mummy helped, the ones who were drunk or having problems with their brains. Those times, she would stick close to her mother. But she wasn't scared of Loki, because he was a lost prince, and there wasn't anything to be scared about. He just needed to find whatever he was missing.


	2. The Faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He cried for the moments—the moments that would have turned into days and then years—moments to live and to love and bear children, moments to die deaths of peace and dignity

The Faces

Loki followed the compact form of the mother and the minuscule one of the child as they led him three blocks from the train station and to the front of a white house with peeling siding and a yard overgrown with weeds. He saw warm yellow light in the windows, and he felt his heart lurch, eager at the prospect of warmth and shelter.

"My friend Belinda will put you up, ok?" said Lena, nodding toward the rundown structure. Loki nodded once and waited as she knocked lightly at the door. Pip stood on her tiptoes as if she would burst before it finally opened.

"Hello?" A large, smiling woman emerged onto the front step, dressed in a bright pink robe. "Oh, it's you, Honey." She enveloped Lena in a tight hug and then swung Pip up onto her hip.

"This is Mr. Loki," said Lena, motioning him forward. He stepped into the faint light that emanated from inside the house and felt the genial woman's eyes on him.

"You need a place, Baby?" she asked, reaching out a thick hand. Loki clasped it. He had seen the mortals shake hands, and he knew that he was expected to do the same. He didn't want to jeopardize his potential for a bed. What he hadn't counted on was the pleasantness of the warmth that coursed through him from the woman's touch. "Come with me," she said softly. "I have just the thing."

The inside of the house wasn't any more prepossessing than the outside, but to Loki it was as welcome as the throne room of Asgard. Everywhere he walked, he had to be careful not to step on people or their possessions, some who looked as bad as he did, others who looked even worse. Most of them were sleeping on mattresses, huddled up but not uncomfortable in the home's warmth. Without speaking, Belinda led him to a small back room that was dark and quiet. A young boy lay near the door, but the room was empty.

"Your first night, you get prime booking," said Belinda, quietly opening a closet and pulling out a mattress similar to the others Loki had seen. It was worn, but it smelled cleaner than anything he had encountered for days. Belinda placed it near the door and handed him a feather pillow. "Here you go, Baby. Just so you know, if you have any weird ideas, I've got a gun, and most of the people in here have knives."

"He won't do anything," Pip suddenly piped up loudly from her place on Belinda's hip. "He's nice." Loki looked at her in sudden surprise.

"Shh, people are sleeping!" Lena took her daughter from the other woman. "We have to be getting home now. Good night, Mr. Loki. Good luck." As the women passed him, Pip made her mother stop, and she reached up and pulled his face close to hers. She stared at him for long moment with her jade green eyes, and then she smiled.

Once he was alone the dark room, Loki lay down on the mattress. For a while, his only thoughts were immediate ones—of the blissful comfort of his body lying against something soft instead of the hard ground and the warmth of knowing that he was allowed to be here, invited, even, instead of an interloper on a world that didn't want him. His eyes closed quickly, and just as his thoughts were turning to bigger, darker realities, he fell asleep. His body was so weary that he slept until morning, and his dreams did not intrude on his conscious mind.

The next morning, the exile awoke early, disoriented by his surroundings. He opened his eyes, lamenting for the millionth time the loss of the extra-keen senses he'd once possessed. He realized after a while that he was inside a human house, and finally the recollection of the previous night reminded him of his circumstances. He woke up hungry, but not nearly as starved as he'd expected. The previous night's food still fortified his weak frame, and he thought of the woman and her child, thankful that they, unlike most of their fellow humans, had deigned to treat him as if he existed.

Loki sat up and stretched his limbs, feeling better than he had for many days. He swung his long legs over the side of the mattress and rose, and the scent of some kind of food drifted into his nostrils. His body had fully appropriated the sustenance of the previous night, and he cursed the weakness that meant he required food again so quickly.

He opened the door of the room and walked out into the house, noticing that he wasn't the only early riser. Very few of the occupants still slept, and several were engaged in conversation. He didn't speak to anyone, and no one spoke to him. Instead, he followed his nose through the ancient, run-down house and found his way to the kitchen, where the smell of food originated.

"Good morning, Baby," said Belinda, who was now clad in a bright green dress. "Come on in." Loki stepped into the small, hot room, which contained Midgardian cooking devices. He didn't know all their names, but he could see that the woman was cooking pieces of meat that looked like sausages and some kind of flat bread that sizzled.

"Everybody likes sausage and pancakes," she said, suddenly handing him a plate piled high with pieces of the bread. "Take that out to the table in the dining room and come back for more." She pointed through the kitchen and into a room with a large table, crowded with chairs around it that were occupied by people of all ages.

Unsure of himself, Loki gingerly carried the plate to the table, but before he faced the question of where to set it down, eager hands grabbed it and began passing it around. He returned to Belinda, desperately hoping she might feed him something, but afraid he wasn't allowed to ask. The last thing he wanted was to lose the most favorable situation he'd experienced since his exile.

"What's wrong, Honey?" the woman asked as she presented him with a bowl piled high with sausage.

He cleared his throat. Silly for a prince of Jotunheim to be too nervous to speak to a woman of Midgard. He squared his shoulders. "I—I'm hungry."

Belinda looked at him for a moment, and her face conveyed surprise. "Oh, Baby, don't you know how to fight for it? I assumed you knew you should just grab something before they take it all. There's enough to go around, but you have to be quick." She sailed over to attend to a utensil of some sort, and he took the sausages to the table, but this time, he ate three of them in the doorway of the kitchen. In the past, he could have conjured an illusion and taken whatever he wanted, but now he could not afford to be greedy, lest the large woman see him and force him back to the street.

The diners at the table were as quick to seize the sausages as they had been the pancakes, and Loki watched with amazement at how quickly they had passed them around and emptied the bowl completely of its contents. A very young woman with shaky hands tried to cut her meat and failed, but the elderly, nearly toothless man next to her did it for her instead. The exiled prince did not understand the reason for the man's kindness or for the red-eyed, ravaged look of the girl. As he glanced around the table, there were many things about the faces of the occupants that he did not understand.

The faces, he now knew, were his punishment. The experience of a human existence, even for a short time, had taught him how brief and harsh and fraught with meaning earthly lives were. In their faces, he saw the faces of the men and women and children he had killed, if not with his own hands, then by his choices. They each meant so much, their every moment as precious as a jewel because they had been given so few.

Loki stumbled outside before the tears that filled his eyes spilled over. He stood on the dirty street, in front of the crumbling house, and he wept. He wept as he had not done since the day he'd fallen from Asgard, but this time he did not weep for himself. He cried for the moments—the moments that would have turned into days and then years—moments to live and to love and bear children, moments to die deaths of peace and dignity. He wept for every moment he had stolen from the Midgardians whose lives he had taken.


	3. Runaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki smiled. "You—remind me of my mother. No matter how naughty I was, she always tried to find a way to make it her fault."
> 
> "And did you learn?" asked Lena curiously, trying to understand the man in front of her.
> 
> "Not until it was too late," he answered, brushing a hand over his long, black hair.

Runaway

Loki did not notice when someone joined him, until he felt a hand creep softly into his. Startled, he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and looked down to find Pip at his side, staring up at him with a concerned expression.

"Hello, Small One," he said.

"Why are you crying?" she asked, which, he thought, was a sensible question under the circumstances.

"I remembered something," he said.

"Oh," she answered, seemingly satisfied, or, if not satisfied, at least content to mull over another mystery of the adult world.

"Where's your mother?" he asked, thinking that it was his turn to inquire.

"At home," Pip answered, looking down at the dirty street. That didn't seem quite right, even to a prince of Asgard who was not long acquainted with Midgardian ways.

"Did she send you here all by yourself?" he asked, remembering how fussy Frigga had been when he was a child, even one much older than the little girl.

"No—o," she answered slowly, her eyes still firmly fixed on the ground. "I rode the train to come see you."

"By yourself?" Loki asked, half in admiration and half in bemusement.

"Uh huh," she answered, blushing crimson.

The exiled prince of Asgard crouched down to reach eye level with the little girl. "I've a hunch that was a very naughty thing to do," he said. Many things, he had come to discover, are the same no matter what world you find your feet touching, and one of them was certainly the mischief of children.

That was when she started crying.

At first, Loki considered saying something about how it was her very own fault for coming across the city by herself to find a bad man her mother had been smart enough to pass off to someone else. If she'd been a year or two older, he might have done it, but she was so very small and so very cold and so very pathetic that the words died in his mouth. He had, after all, been a very naughty child once.

"Don't cry," he said awkwardly, gingerly trying to use his long first finger to wipe the tears off her cheek. "Belinda will know how to get you home."

His own tears were dry by this time, and he took the child's hand and led her back to the house while her sobs quieted. She said nothing more, but stared at him intently with her jade green eyes.

Mothers

Lena was frantic. Over and over, she prayed under her breath that Pip would remember their address. She paced up and down in front of the door, scared to leave for fear her daughter would appear, but barely able to contain her impulse to run out and start searching every corner of New York City. The police wouldn't do anything. They said it hadn't been long enough.

Finally, two hours after she'd first realized Pip was missing from the apartment, a polite tap at the door made her nearly jump out of her skin. She opened it to reveal her errant daughter clutched in the arms of the hobo from the night before, who looked slightly better after a full night's sleep.

Pip eagerly went to her mother, who hugged her so tightly the little girl squealed. "Are you all right? I'm furious, you know." Her tenderness belied her words, but after a moment, she turned her daughter around to face Loki, who stood still and silent, watching with his sad eyes. "Apologize to Mr. Loki for all the trouble."

"I'm sorry," said Pip obediently, hanging her head.

"That was very wrong," said Lena firmly. "Go to your room, and I'll be in to talk about it in a bit." She sent her daughter off with another affectionate squeeze, then stood up to face the man she'd rescued the previous night. "I'm so sorry about this, Mr. Loki. She said she wanted to see you today, and I told her we couldn't, so I guess she took matters into her own hands. Believe it or not, she's never normally so disobedient." Lena let out an unconscious sigh. "I worry that I'm too busy—that I don't spend enough time with her." She shook her head.

Loki smiled. "You—remind me of my mother. No matter how naughty I was, she always tried to find a way to make it her fault."

"And did you learn?" asked Lena curiously, trying to understand the man in front of her.

"Not until it was too late," he answered, brushing a hand over his long, black hair.

Princes

Pip sat on her bed, thoroughly ashamed of herself. She didn't like being naughty, and she had certainly misjudged the risk versus reward of her latest venture. Still, she was sure of something: Mr. Loki had to be a prince. She knew how men were. Men had jobs and wore suits and were too busy to talk to her, or else they lived at Belinda's and weren't quite right in their brains.

Mr. Loki wasn't like that. He had taken her to Belinda's house and then offered to ride the train home with her when that lady was too busy to leave right away to take an errant little girl back to her mother. He had held her hand all the way to the metro and then put her on his lap for the ride home. Finally, for the few blocks to the apartment building, he had carried her. Only a prince would do that, she thought, so he must be one.

Pip didn't know that Loki had only done what he had seen his own mother and her mother do. She didn't realize that his peculiar tenderness came from obligation—he didn't know the Midgardian child could ride in a seat by herself, so he sheltered her in his lap. He had no idea if she could walk the gravel streets on her tiny feet, so he lifted her up to his shoulder and carried her. He did not know how easy it might be to break her, and he did not want to do that. She was far too alive.


	4. Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He clicked a box on the screen that said "Click Here" and began the test. He'd been told he'd have an hour to complete the fifty question assessment, so he should proceed as quickly as possible and come back to problem questions at the end. Within two minutes, he understood the computer fully, and within seven, he'd finished the test.

Work

"Would you like a job?"

If the words had come out of another kind of mortal mouth, a disdainful one, or a pitying one, Loki would have said something biting in reply and taken his leave. Instead, they came from the mouth of Lena Warren, who only smiled, and he couldn't quite bring himself to be cruel.

"What—what sort of job?"

"Anything, really," the woman answered, stepping out of the doorway to her daughter's room and rejoining him in her apartment's living room. "I work at an employment agency. You take a test, and then we match you with somewhere that needs you. It's nothing amazing, but it's better than nothing."

Loki considered. "What sort of test?" He had no desire to be humiliated by his lack of knowledge about human customs.

"Computers, telephones, word processing," she recited. "You don't have to know how to do everything. We fit you with whatever you're good at."

Though he knew little of archaic human technology, Loki recognized the words. "Very well," he said. "I will take your test."

He was rewarded with another smile. "I'm not working today, but I'll take you there. I'd better go tell the little sinner she's out of jail early. I'm sorry you had to come all the way over here. I hope this will make it worth it for you."

"I had little else to do," he answered wryly.

Within the hour, Loki found himself seated in front of a Midgardian computer screen in the middle of a large office building, where hundreds of mortals worked, packed into tiny rooms like human sardines. Lena and her daughter, who was still subdued from her earlier scolding, waited for him behind a glass door, but he had been left alone with the laughably simple device.

He clicked a box on the screen that said "Click Here" and began the test. He'd been told he'd have an hour to complete the fifty question assessment, so he should proceed as quickly as possible and come back to problem questions at the end. Within two minutes, he understood the computer fully, and within seven, he'd finished the test.

Loki clicked the "Score Test" button and was mildly pleased to see a "50/50 Correct" flash across the screen, though he was hardly surprised. The questions had consisted of requests for him to complete laughably simple tasks on the computer in front of him, when in reality, he could have dismantled the entire machine and put it back together in a far more intelligent way, had he been requested to do so.

He took the automatic printout from a nearby machine and turned to leave the room, but as he walked toward the door, he noticed Pip's grave green eyes staring at him through the clear back wall. Loki, God of Mischief, Prince of Asgard, winked.


	5. Good Will Hunting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that he no longer craved their adulation, it was strange to find himself faced with a crowd of mortals, all staring at him in open admiration.

Good Will Hunting

Loki opened the glass doors and went out into the main room of the agency, where Lena and her child waited for him, away from a group of inhabited cubicles. The older woman held out her hand for his result, which he handed over obligingly. He found, as he watched her face, that he hoped she would be pleased.

What he did not expect was for Lena's eyes to nearly bug out of her head. "This is—this isn't possible," she said, staring at the paper. "Nobody gets every question. It's designed that way on purpose."

Loki felt uncertain. He'd been so sure that he'd done well that her reaction dismayed him and brought up in his chest the feeling of frozen rejection that had followed him all of his life. "No one informed me that I should miss some on purpose," he answered coldly.

Just then, Pip, who had been silent until then, inserted her small body between the two adults. "Mr. Loki got them all because he's a prince." It was Loki's turn for his eyes to nearly bulge out of his head, his surprise of the moment before completely dwarfed by his current consternation. He'd known there was something unusual about the child. He hadn't expected this.

In one motion, Loki picked the little girl up by the waist, hoisted her effortlessly into his arms, and dashed out of the room and into an empty hallway. He set Pip down in front of him and knelt down to her level. "How do you know that?" he asked forcefully, putting all of his Asgardian fearsomeness behind the words. "Do you possess psychic abilities? Who told you? The Allfather has changed the memories of everyone in this realm. No Midgardian knows!"

Instead of showing even the least bit of perturbation, the child took advantage of Loki's unusual proximity to wrap her arms around his neck. "So you are a prince," she said. "I knew it."

With that, Loki remembered that he was on Midgard, among mortals, in a place where children were taught romantic tales about lost princes every day. Only a few among the billions possessed special abilities, and those that did were far away. He was in the presence of nothing more than keen intelligence and an active imagination. He felt, frankly, a bit foolish. Even if the child did speak, who would believe her?

In order to assuage his sudden guilt at his harshness, Loki returned the embrace and stood with the girl in a much gentler hold than before. "I'm sorry," she said, her cheek against his, "I won't tell any more."

"Hmmph," answered the God of Mischief, feeling completely out of his element. He carried the little girl back to the large room, expecting to find an angry mother. Instead, he and his cargo found Lena in the center of a crowd of excited people.

"Sir!" said an elated man, who was excessively short and wore large spectacles, "allow me to congratulate you!" He took the hand Loki wasn't using to hold Pip and pumped it up and down.

"Bob, he doesn't even know what's going on," said Lena, emerging from the crowd. "Mr. Loki, you're the first perfect score we've ever had. We don't usually have to find jobs for people who can do everything." She was smiling now, and Pip's absence appeared to have gone unnoticed, for which he was very glad.

Oh, the irony. Long ago, Loki had felt his superiority to the mortals, worn it proudly like the gold horns on his helmet. But he had long since realized that intelligence did not equate to survival, not when one was cursed into mortality. He had not ceased to understand that his intellect was far beyond that of the humans, but he had ceased to care. Now that he no longer craved their adulation, it was strange to find himself faced with a crowd of mortals, all staring at him in open admiration.

The spell was broken by his recollection of the fact that while the burden in his arms was quite light, he might do well to relinquish it before awkward questions arose. He set the little girl on the ground, which caused a vast amount of disappointment to cross her face. Children might be confusing enough, he thought, but female children were entirely beyond him, however elevated his intellect might be.

\---

Lena watched as the tall stranger placed her daughter onto the carpet in front of him, as if he was handling a rare and excessively fragile antique vase. She did not know what to think of him, with his sad eyes and brilliant mind. "Good Will Hunting" had always been a film, never a reality.

She helped people. She did not expect them to be geniuses. She felt lucky when she could give a leg up to a non-addict, maybe a job working construction or waiting tables. She had never even met anyone who knew everything the man in front of her could so easily access.

Suddenly, she felt small and a little bit foolish. It was not right that a mind like that should be encased in a starving body and looking out of eyes that tortured. People with minds like his were meant to be doctors, scientists, philosophers, working with people like themselves to make the world better. They were far too important to be led around by a simple woman who worked in a little employment agency.

\---

Pip watched the adults around her talk about things she didn't understand, but she didn't care. She was filled with her own private delight, the joy of finding out that Mr. Loki's secret was real, that all of her suspicions were correct. That night, when she went to bed, she would read her favorite fairy tale, the story of Cinderella, and the Prince Charming in her mind would have a pale face, long fingers, and be very, very bad at scaring little girls.


	6. Peril

Loki stared at himself in the mirror. He looked respectable, for a mortal, that is. He had on a black suit and a white shirt, and his hair was shorter than it had been since his exile. The small hotel room he occupied was not opulent, but it was comfortable.

It was funny, he thought, how the Midgardians reacted to simple intelligence. It hadn't been ten minutes since his test before someone had offered him a hotel room and taken him shopping. He was going to be an engineer, they said. He didn't know what that was, but he felt unperturbed. He had yet to encounter a Midgardian job he could not do or earthly object he could not fully explain. Perhaps it would be better than spending lethargic days starving on the side of the street, at any rate.

He must remember, he thought, to make mistakes. Mortals did not like perfection. It frightened them, and they tended to react with mob-like fury. Since he no longer possessed the strength of Asgard, he must take precautions not to alarm them. Had he realized the employment test was meant to be difficult, he would have contrived to do less well on it. He would not miscalculate again.

Loki tied his blue necktie and went to work on the breakfast he'd ordered, something the Midgardians called cereal. He liked their food. He'd never cared for Asgard's ornate, ceremonial meals that so often included smiles that concealed black motives. The people of earth ate plain food when their bodies demanded it. He appreciated the stark simplicity. He had not, he thought, experienced nearly enough simplicity in his many years of life, and he found it calming.

Once finished satisfying his stomach, he proceeded out of his room and down the hall to the elevators. He noticed, as he stepped into one of the small descending rooms, that the eyes of the other occupants, two women, were firmly fixed on him in open admiration. On Asgard, the women had preferred Thor, with his broad arms and pale hair. Perhaps the women of Midgard did not mind his pale skin and the black hair that curled over his forehead.

As he was stepping out into the hotel's lobby, one of the women handed him a slip of paper. He was too surprised to look at it until she'd passed by him and out of the building. When he opened it, he found a list of seven digits that meant nothing to him. Perhaps she wasn't entirely sane, he thought.

His objective was the front of the hotel, where one of the men from the employment agency, a red-faced, elderly man named Charles Richards, had promised to fetch him to take him to his new job. He did not like riding in cars; it seemed an onerous waste of time to one who had used teleportation all of his life. Since his exile, he had cursed his powerlessness many times, but never more so than when he contemplated having to ride through downtown traffic.

"Mr Loki!" The enthusiastic Richards interrupted his reverie with a firm handshake. "Step right this way. Your Limousine is waiting." Loki did as he was told without much response, getting into the back of the long vehicle and stretching his legs. His host slid in beside him, still smiling.

\---

"Mummy, what's this?" Pip bent over to retrieve something from the floor.

Lena looked up absently from her desk and took a small card out of her daughter's hand. "Charles Richards, AER" was all it said, but her face paled, then flushed, in rapid succession.

"Pip," she said, "I want you to go to Aunt Ginny's office and wait there. Everything's fine, but I have to go out for a little while. All right, sweetheart?" The little girl did not look overly convinced, but she did as her mother asked and went down the hall to the cubicle that belonged to Lena's best friend.

Once her daughter had disappeared, Lena took out her cell phone and hit the #3 speed dial as she walked out of the office, trying to look like a relaxed employee going to the break room for a snack or some coffee.

Thankfully, the elevator was empty, and as she stepped into it, a voice said, "Hello" into the phone.

"Luke," she said, "I need help. The AER has one of mine."

\---

Pip flipped through her aunt's stash of fashion magazines and sipped a decaffeinated coffee, feeling very grown up. "We should paint our nails," said the languid voice of the brunette behind the desk.

The little girl shook her head. "We always paint our nails."

"I know, chick," Ginny answered. "Have to keep our standards up for the boys. Speaking of which, that guy your mom brought in isn't hard to look at."

Pip rolled her eyes. "Mummy says what's in a person's brain is much more important than what's on the outside," she intoned.

"Keep thinking that, sweetheart," said her aunt, taking out a bottle of Red Diamonds.

Pip watched her aunt paint her thumbnail before her gaze strayed to the photo on the credenza behind the woman's desk. It was small and held in a simple wooden frame. In it, a tall, smiling man had his arm around a brown-haired woman who looked a lot like Aunt Ginny but was far too young. Pip had always wondered who they were, but her mother had told her, in that special tone, that she was never to ask. Violating the special tone was too risky to conscience, and so she never had.

She'd always thought the man had a nice face.


	7. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Something rather bad did happen to me," he said, "or could have, I mean." Lena's eyes showed concern, and he found that he did not want to worry her. "I escaped, as you see."

Flight

Three minutes into the limousine ride through downtown Los Angeles, Loki realized that Charles Richards had nothing like his best interests at heart. For once, he was glad that his circumstances had made him appear weak and purposeless, because it was obvious the man next to him had no idea what sort of power he actually possessed. Not Asgardian power, but being stripped of his deity had done nothing to alter the keenness of his mind or the sharpness of his reflexes. He had detected dissonance in the other man's body language and the tone of his voice. The Trickster had always known with absolute certainty when he was being tricked.

He forced a smile to his face, as ifs he were listening to the man's vapid comments on the sights they passed in the city. Slowly, he moved his hand to his necktie, loosening it gently. Then, when Richards had his face turned to look out the window, he did the same to his belt buckle, unclasping it soundlessly before scanning the road ahead, gauging the time until they would reach the next stoplight. He did not know how far away their destination lay, so he did not want to waste any more time.

With agonizing patience, he slipped toward the opposite side of the vehicle, waiting until the driver had nearly stopped at the red signal before hurling himself toward the door, flipping the lock with his agile fingers, and flinging the car open. His timing, he was pleased to note, was perfect. He jumped out of the limousine just as it ceased movement.

Loki ran down the Los Angeles street as fast as his legs would carry him, jerking the tie from his neck and the belt from his waist. He hoped he would not need them, but they could serve as makeshift weapons if Richards or someone else chose to follow him. He heard shouts echoing behind him, but he had surprise in his favor, and when he finally let himself glance back, he saw only a few curious onlookers, but no one in pursuit.

He did not know where to go. For the first time in his life, he felt frustrated by his aloneness. He had always valued his autonomy and gloried in his ability to defend himself without the help of a single other person. Now that he was mortal, he would be fortunate, he realized, to be able to take down even three or four of the humans. His intelligence would not save him against brute strength.

Five minutes into his flight, when he was starting to get winded, he looked up and found himself in front of a multi-story brick office building. Lena's Warren's building. The hotel room he'd been given had not been far from it. and Richards had only succeeded in taking him a few blocks in the slow LA traffic. He did not know what else to do, so he went inside.

After the morning he'd had, Loki did not expect further surprises, but as he crossed through the glass doors and into the tiled lobby, he immediately found himself being embraced so tightly that his ribs seemed in danger of cracking, by a person whose head barely reached halfway up his chest.

"I'm sorry," said the voice belonging to the body, pulling away. "I thought something very bad had happened to you." Loki looked down and locked eyes with a button-nosed, pixie-haired woman. He was surprised to feel relief flood him at seeing her. It was the Mother herself.

"Something rather bad did happen to me," he said, "or could have, I mean." Lena's eyes showed concern, and he found that he did not want to worry her. "I escaped, as you see."

He followed the woman to a corner of the room, out of the way of the others who came and went from the busy building. "Why are you holding your belt and necktie?" she asked.

"I thought I might need to defend myself," he explained. "Charles Richards, the man from yesterday, didn't seem to be the most honest of men."

Lena nodded. "I know that now. He's not from my company. I've seen him in the building before, and I assumed he worked on another floor. He sort of materialized yesterday after the furor over your test results, and I thought he was just an interested employer that somebody had called. I shouldn't have trusted without verifying. I'm sorry." She spoke in an insistent but very quiet near-whisper.

"Pip is with a friend of mine. I don't think you should go back upstairs. I'll take you to my apartment and call in a personal day."

"You believe me, then?" asked Loki, slightly stunned by the woman's quick acceptance of his story.

"I know more about it than you do," she said, "but I don't want to talk about it here. I'll explain when we're safely home. In the meantime, keep your weapons, and I'll get the mace out of my purse." Seeing no reason to argue, Loki nodded once, then followed her out of the building.


	8. Learning

Learning

Loki had never known the kind of fear he now felt. The Trickster had always been powerful, assured, confident that failure would yield to success when he combined his mental and physical powers. Even when he'd been imprisoned on Asgard, he'd simply bided his time and waited for his captors to make inevitable mistakes. After all, what is a few months or years of prison in a life that encompasses millennia?

But mortal lives are short, poignant, and sharply beautiful. As he took his place beside the woman in a half-filled underground train, he felt the stab of terror that the few years his body might offer him could be cut short by another's malevolence. He did not want to die.

Once again, sickening shame washed over him as he recalled how many short, candle-flame lives he had snuffed out without a second thought. He had not known. He had not understood what it was like to weigh moments like sand in an hourglass and treasure each grain as if it were a diamond.

"Are you ok?" Lena's question was accompanied by a light touch of her small hand on his arm. "Don't worry. Even if they followed us here, which I doubt, they would never dare to take you from a crowded train. They value their secrecy too much."

Loki blinked, trying to bring himself back to the present moment and away from his agonizing regrets. The truth was, he wanted his mother, but she was long gone.

\---

Lena had not thought it was possible for her companion to grow even paler than he already was, but when she heard his hitched breathing and looked over to study his face, she found that he was whiter than she'd ever seen him. His eyes were far away, but he was panicking. She could feel it in the rigidity of his body and see it in the slight shake of the hand that rested on his knee, the hand that held a navy blue necktie that now symbolized destroyed hopes.

She resisted the urge to embrace him like a mewling stray kitten. She had already hugged him once, most inappropriately, she felt, and she did not want to scare him even further, not a man she hardly knew. She must remember, she reminded herself, that whatever his story or his private pain, he possessed a mind so far beyond hers that it was a wonder she could even communicate with him. The AER's interest was itself proof of how exceptional he was. She must not fancy that she knew him. In time, he would be far away, moving in circles she could never hope to reach. She might be sure of relatively few things, but Lena Warren was fully convinced of how ordinary she was.

\---

Pip held Ginny's hand obediently, but she nearly exploded with eagerness to press on ahead into the vast, magical world of the bookstore. After a few minutes of idle chatter in the office, her aunt had declared that she felt like taking a personal day, scooped Pip up under one arm, and headed for the nearest shopping plaza. She'd only agreed to stop at the bookstore first if Pip promised to act like a living doll and submit to having herself dressed and re-dressed over and over for the rest of the day. It was an activity she knew well and felt great indifference toward, feeling, as her mother did, that clothes were largely a matter of function. To her aunt, they were some kind of religious sacrament. Still, the little girl felt the trade-off was worth it.

"Where do you want to go, Baby?" asked Ginny, looking around the large room filled with tables and stacks of books.

"Fairy tales," said Pip promptly. She'd always had a fondness for fantasy, but since meeting Mr. Loki, her very own prince, her interest had grown into near-obsession. She looked around her curiously as her aunt led her to the colorful children's fantasy section. What she really wanted was to use the computer to look up two words, words that had been spinning around and around in her mind, ever since her black-haired prince had said them to her the day before: "Allfather" and "Midgardian." She did not know what they meant, and she had no idea how to spell them, but they sounded more like fantasy than anything she'd ever heard.

As the little girl had hoped, Ginny gave her freedom to roam once they reached their destination. "I'm going to look something up," she said, smiling, and her aunt nodded as she made her way to the searchable computer. Thankfully, the store had seen fit to provide a step stool up to the keyboard. Pip did not want to have to explain her strange queries to her companion.

She tried "all father" as two words. She was not stupid enough to be unable to spell those, at least. Unfortunately, that brought up a host of books on parenting, biographies, and novels. Not one of them appeared to pertain to princes or fairy tales in any way. She shook her head, frustrated. The other word was harder, and she had hoped she would not need it. "Mid-gard" she repeated to herself, trying to remember the phonics she'd learned in school. With her luck, she thought, it would be one of those stupid words that adults spelled in a totally illogical way.

But she was in luck. Her first query brought up a book called Asgard, Midgard, and Norse Mythology. She smiled. "Mythology," her mother had taught her, was just a big, fancy word for fairy tales that even grown people liked to read. The only problem was, it was located in a grown-up section.

Sighing, Pip hopped off the step stool and went to where her aunt was sitting on an undersized chair, perusing a Babysitter's Club book. "Auntie, I want to go to the adult history section," she said brightly.

Ginny's eyebrow went up. "Really? Ok, you're the reader," she said, shrugging and rising to take the little girl's hand once again. Pip practically skipped through the aisles. She didn't know what she would find, but she would at least learn what Mr. Loki's word meant, and that filled her with pleasure.


	9. Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What happened to me isn't your fault, and neither was what happened to your brother." Lena was surprised by the vehemence in the man's voice. She'd never heard him so passionate. "There are plenty of people who do terrible things on purpose. You're nothing like any of them."

Tea

Lena walked through her apartment slowly, looking for any signs that someone had disturbed the space, but she found none. Loki followed her, still brandishing his makeshift weapons, and she found that she was not sorry to have him by her side.

"All clear," she said. "This is my fault. I should have known everything was happening too easily. I'm sorry."

Her companion looked baffled. "I fail to understand what responsibility you could possibly have," he said. "I chose to go with the man."

"There's a great deal more to it," said Lena, going into the kitchen and putting the kettle on, feeling like she would burst if she had nothing to do.

"I have a coworker at the agency. Her name is Ginny Monroe. Pip's with her now. A long time ago, she was married to my brother. His name was Charlie. He was like you—a genius. He liked to keep to himself, always a little bit scared of people. He was older than me, but people always thought I was older because I took care of him." She fell silent for a moment, remembering.

"Anyway, Charlie and Ginny got married while he was getting his master's degree. He wanted to be a private engineer, to make things for people that would solve problems—like machines to enhance the lives of the physically challenged. While he was still in school, he invented a kind of inhaler that made it so people like Pip can breathe better. Right after he graduated, though, he was approached by a guy who said he was from the Association for Exceptional Recruitment. They offered him a job—huge package, big benefits. Charlie wanted to turn it down. He said he was happy doing things on his own for private clients. But Ginny and I convinced him to take it. We said—he'd regret it if he didn't." She stopped again, pouring boiling water into her favorite red teapot over Earl Grey leaves.

"Orientation was set to take place in New York City. Charlie got his ticket, and we sent him off on an airplane—and never saw him again." Lena couldn't stop her voice from shaking. It had been a very long time since she'd told the story or let herself remember it.

"We told the police, but no one ever found a trace of him or evidence that the company existed, even though there are other disappearances linked to them. There's a detective—Luke Allen, who still looks into the case every now and then, but nothing ever turns up. I should have realized this felt the same—too quick and easy."

"What happened to me isn't your fault, and neither was what happened to your brother." Lena was surprised by the vehemence in the man's voice. She'd never heard him so passionate. "There are plenty of people who do terrible things on purpose. You're nothing like any of them."

Lena poured tea into two mugs and tried to get a read on the tall, rail-thin man leaning against her kitchen island. He was a bundle of contradictions—anxious but self-assured, quiet but authoritative, still but agitated, gentle in an offhand way, as if he had no idea what it meant to be kind and had arrived at it accidentally.

"Here," she said, handing him tea. "This is to pass the time until Luke gets here."

\---

Loki watched the small woman go through her deliberate motions. There was something strangely hypnotic about the way her hands moved. On Asgard, he'd had servants who'd prepared all of his food and drinks, using contraptions designed for the purpose. He had never seen anyone make tea by hand.

Just as she knew every step of the process, he was beginning to see a path stretch out in front of him. The Allfather never did anything without a purpose, and Loki started to wonder if his exile to this particular time and place was because of this association, or whatever it was, that had brought the small woman so much obvious pain.

He had not thought redemption was possible; he now wondered if it might lie in proving his worth by bringing down an organization.


	10. Detectives and Pixies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love felt good, like something he'd been missing for a very long time

Detectives and Pixies

Detective Luke Allen was fifty-five and had a small, round belly that his wife Linda liked to use as a pillow. His workload was far too high for him to be making visits across the city for no reason other than the supposed AER, an elusive organization the official force had long-ago dismissed as a fantasy. But Lena was not a crazy woman, and neither was the sister-in-law who still had no husband. He could not resist the call.

"Hi, Luke." The woman was as pert as ever as she let him into her apartment. "This is Mr. Loki, who can tell you about a personal encounter with the AER."

Luke shook the man's thin hand. "How? You actually escaped them? You'd be the first, as far as we know."

Mr. Loki nodded once but didn't comment.

"I have this." Luke accepted a card from Lena's hand, an AER business card, it seemed.

"Is this the man who tried to abduct you?" he asked the pale stranger.

"That is the name he gave," was the reply. Not one for big speeches, the detective thought.

"Well, I'll take this with me. It's enough to reopen the investigation. I'd like to get a full statement from you, Mr. Loki, so I've brought a digital recorder."

Once again, a nod was his only answer until he'd taken out his small device and handed it to the other man, who began speaking quickly and recounted the story of his meeting with Charles Richards through his escape. He was thorough, concise, and exceptionally well-spoken.

"My goodness," said Luke, taking the device back. "I wish all of my witnesses and CIs were like you. You've no idea how much I have to go through to get a clear story out of people.

With that, he shook the man's hand again and kissed Lena on the cheek. "Lay low, Mr. Loki. Lena, I'll call you as soon as I have anything to report. Give the little one a kiss for me," he said, before taking his leave. As he exited the building, he pondered how ironically depressing it was to be so well-acquainted with a years-long case that he was on friendly enough terms to treat a woman involved like she was his daughter.

\---

"You can trust him," said Lena, refilling Loki's mug of tea.

He smiled at her. "It doesn't really matter, but he seems like a kind man."

"He is," she answered readily. "I suppose the one silver lining in this whole, horrible case has been that I met him. I never had a dad growing up, and he—acts like it sometimes, checks in even when there are no new clues. You know?"

Loki didn't know. "I was adopted," he said softly.

"Oh," said Lena. "Was it good?"

Loki stared at the far wall of the apartment, out the window and across the view of grimy city streets. "I—don't know," he finally answered. "I used to be very angry about it, but maybe it was my fault it went badly."

"Always two sides," answered the woman matter-of-factly. "I've seen it with kids who start at Belinda's and then got fostered or adopted out, only to wind up back on the street or in the system. Even the best situations are not perfect, and adoptive parents make a lot of mistakes."

They subsided into silence, and Loki felt calmness and a feeling of safety fill him in Lena's company. Somehow, her simple words had soothed him and untangled his web of guilt and shame and anger more effectively than any of the bitter arguments he'd had on Asgard.

"I think—you should stay here," said the woman after a while. "Luke won't want you to go anywhere because of the risk. It's—I'm violating my own rule by asking you, but you should know that I keep a gun and mace beside my pillow. If you try anything against me or my daughter, I won't hesitate to use either one.

Loki blinked. "You—would offer me a place in your home? For my protection?" He'd hardly even heard the part about guns and mace. He was too stunned.

Lena reached out and gently brushed his cheek—like a mother. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, pulling her hand back. "Of course I want you to stay here and be safe. You're Pip's prince. What on earth would I tell her if anything happened to you?"

With that, the woman took out her mobile phone and touched the screen. "Gin? I'm home now, and I've seen Luke. Could you bring Pip back?"

Twenty minutes later, there was a light knock on the door, and the mother opened it to find the little girl. Loki didn't realize it, but he smiled inadvertently when he saw her.

"Where's Auntie?" asked Lena.

"She's late for a date," Pip answered, "so she put me on the elevator and left." Loki wondered why her mother rolled her eyes at this.

Later, after a delicious dinner and an English period drama on TV, which Loki found imbecilic and tiring, Lena carried her daughter to bed. Within a couple of minutes, the mother returned with a slightly apologetic expression. "She wants you. You don't have to go if you don't want to. I'm sorry she's so obsessed with you."

He rose immediately. He couldn't think of any reason why he shouldn't answer the green-eyed girl's summons. Besides, he was intrigued. He had no idea what Midgardian children were like at bedtime.

"I would like a goodnight cuddle," said Pip, as soon as he appeared.

"What does that mean?" Loki asked. The words were unfamiliar to him, and he fidgeted in the little girl's doorway, feeling at a loss.

"Come here." She beckoned him to sit on her bed, and when he did, she turned serious eyes on him. "It means I sit on your lap, like on the train, but you put your arms around me, nice and tight like Mummy does, and then I get sleepy."

"It will get you to sleep?" he asked dubiously.

She nodded, so he took her gently into his hands, still scared of breaking her, and set her in the middle of his lap, his arms loosely draped around her.

"Tighter," she complained. "It won't work like that." So he complied, pulling her close and instinctively cradling her against his chest. "There," she said. "That's cuddling."

He could feel her breathing slow, almost like it was magic, and she relaxed in his hold. He found the contact physically soothing as well, and he decided that if this cuddling was so good for getting to sleep, he should look into doing it more often.

He heard Pip yawn, but then she spoke softly. "Don't be mad."

"Why would I be?" he asked.

"I—looked up things about you in books."

Loki released the little girl, keeping her on his knees, but making her face him. "I thought we talked about this," he said sternly. "I thought I made it clear that sort of thing would be very naughty. At the very least, you don't deserve any more of this—cuddling, as you call it."

He made to put her back in bed, but the little girl's face fell, and she looked suspiciously near tears. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do something bad. I just wanted to look up the words you said to me the other day, and I found out about you being a prince for real—in Asgard. I wasn't going to tell you, but I felt bad.

Loki was about to say that the little girl in front of him was quite right to feel bad, but just then, one of her tears spilled over and coursed down her cheek, and he couldn't bring himself to be stern. "Come here," he said, pulling her back into his arms, this time letting her sniffle against his shoulder and patting her back. "I'll have you know I'm not rewarding you for being a nosy little pixie. I'm very cross with you. This—this cuddling is a punishment this time."

The next sound he heard was giggling, and he felt Pip's little body shaking against him. He was even more deeply confused when she sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck and curled up even closer to him. "I love you," she said, her eyes closed and her head on his bony shoulder.

"What on earth for?" he asked, holding her tenderly, the way he'd once held a kitten, the thing he'd treasured most in the world when he'd been a small boy.

"Because you love me," she said sleepily. "But I'm sorry I made you mad."

"Hush," he said, trying to sound cross and entirely failing. "Go to sleep before the bogeymen come and drag you away."

"You wouldn't let them," she retorted, but then she fell silent, and he stroked her hair while she slipped into sleep.

Loki pondered the bundle in his arms. She was a perceptive child. He did love her, and he wanted to be annoyed by it, but he wasn't. Love felt good, like something he'd been missing for a very long time. He was troubled, however, by the little girl's determination to suss him out. He wanted to know exactly what she knew, but he didn't want to talk about it with her, lest it put more ideas into her little head, ideas she might choose to share with her mother.

\---

When Lena passed her daughter's room, she looked in to find her little girl curled up in Loki's arms, asleep or very near. It was a strange thing. Pip wasn't one to trust people quickly or easily, but she looked as contented and comfortable in his arms as she did in her mother's.

Two things flashed through Lena's mind: Loki's face carried so much longing that she wondered how long it had been since anyone had shown him any kind of love, and she had a sudden image of herself where her daughter was, curled up on the lap of the tall, pale, brilliant man, holding him and being held. "Stop it this instant, Lena!" she told herself vehemently.


End file.
